Category Archives: Uncategorized

I had an interesting exchange with Steve Keen last night on Twitter, about things he said on Aditya Chakrabortty’s program on the state of economics and economics teaching. On the program, Steve Keen said a number of things I contest … Continue reading →

I had 3 comments on recent posts taking me as having recommended a higher inflation target now as a cure for the current zero bound episode.  That’s not my position.  A higher inflation target would help avoid the next episode, … Continue reading →

Simon’s defence of NGDP targeting makes many good points – in contrast to what he calls the ‘faith-based’ argumentation of the market monetarists – and this blog responds to some of them. He rightly challenges the emphasis I place on … Continue reading →

And a post post post script. The case against NGDP targeting is actually even stronger theoretically than I let on in that post.  I organised the last post around the simplest possible sticky price model, with no saving, capital, only … Continue reading →

Post Post Script on the zero bound and raising the inflation target. It’s put to me that NGDP targeting is a better way to avoid the zero bound than raising the inflation target. This question can’t be answered definitively without … Continue reading →

Postscript to the previous post on the ZLB. The practical challenges of devising watertight legal reform to eliminate cash and its near substitutes, both currently invented and yet to be, or to reform them so that a variable negative interest … Continue reading →

John Cochrane makes interesting points about the ubiquity of risk-free, zero-interest stores of value in a modern economy. Such multitudes mean that it would be more complicated than at least I had earlier thought to generate a negative nominal interest … Continue reading →

At the next Monetary Policy Committee vote, most are expecting Martin Weale and Ian McCafferty to vote for a 0.25pp rise in interest rates.  They have been voting for just this since August. The curious thing, if you look at … Continue reading →

Had a great lunch with an economist friend who alerted me to something that is obvious, but I had not thought of, and who then explained it wonderfully.  (And then returned to find Twitter full of it too.)  That there … Continue reading →

Pontus Rendahl, a rising star in macroeconomics at Cambridge, makes a revealing comment on my previous post about Aditya Chakrabortty’s idiotic and ill-informed Radio 4 program on economics.  I’ll quote it full here: I was approached, not by BBC, but … Continue reading →